by Neal, Toby
Broken Ferns
A Lei Crime Novel
Toby Neal
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Broken Ferns
Copyright © 2013 by Toby Neal.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Electronic ISBN 978-0-9839524-8-0
Print ISBN 978-0-9839524-9-7
Cover photo © Mike Neal at NealStudios.net
Cover Design © JULIE METZ LTD.
Ebook design by Mythic Island Press LLC
Above all else,
guard your heart,
for it is the wellspring of life.
Proverbs 4:23
Chapter 1
It was a beautiful day to steal an airplane.
Special Agent Leilani Texeira put her hands on her hips and scanned the wide-open bay of the vast steel storage building Paradise Airlines owner Max Smiley used as a hangar and big-boy toy box. Her partner, Ken Yamada, photographed the area: smooth cement floor dotted with a few drops of oil where the ultralight plane had been parked. Ceiling-mounted racks of already-rigged windsurf sails hung above a row of quad vehicles and dirt bikes, all neatly parked in metal stanchions. Along the far wall, a row of shiny antique roadsters gleamed.
“It should be right here.” Smiley’s caterpillar-thick gray brows were drawn together into a single untrimmed hedgerow over narrowed blue eyes. He stamped his foot for emphasis. “Right here.”
Lei walked to the door opening, a rolling garage-style retracted up on a track in the ceiling. The weather was perfect for flying, sunny and still. A blacktopped landing strip merged seamlessly with the floor of the steel barn. The narrow airstrip was edged with tasteful palms and bird-of-paradise, and a series of volcanic-rock stepping stones wound to the turquoise sea. Lei felt the sun, softer in the humid Kaneohe area of Oahu, beating on the top of her curly head. She fished mirrored aviators out of her pocket, slipped them on as she turned back to Smiley.
“You said the house is clear?”
“He got in while we were sleeping. I went through the house when I saw what he did, then came out here.”
“Do you always leave this unlocked?” She indicated the hasp of the sectioned door, hanging free and unmarked.
“Yeah. I’ve got a locked security gate and the fence goes to the beach. Theft hasn’t been a problem in this area. But whoever did this knew about aircraft and flew my plane right out of here, goddamn it!” Smiley’s full face got redder. “You can bet I’m going to lock it from now on. Come see what he did to the house.”
Lei looked over at Ken, who was finishing up with a couple of shots of the open door of the hangar. “We’ll come back and dust for prints,” he said, walking beside Smiley as the mogul led the way to the huge beach house that sprawled against a grassy knoll. “We’ll need pictures of the aircraft and any other identifying information you can give us.”
The house was done in a classic island style, and Lei couldn’t help but like the wide, deep roofline that sheltered a porch that ran the length and breadth of the house. The lanai was dotted with Adirondack chairs in weathered cedar, pointed toward the stunning view of beach and sky.
“How the other one percent lives,” she muttered in aside to Yamada.
Smiley advanced to a bank of glass sliders that fronted the house and pushed one open. Inside, glossy tile covered by woven lauhala matting ended at a stainless-steel modern kitchen. He made a dramatic gesture.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed. “He’s taunting me!”
Bold block printing—probably Sharpie—in a street-graffiti style decorated the shiny steel refrigerator.
YOU STOLE FROM ME.
NOW I’M STEALING FROM YOU.
HAOLE.
The Hawaiian word for Caucasian, not a complimentary sentiment, was followed by a smiley face. Ken lifted the Canon 7D, soundlessly clicking away as Lei took a little spiral notebook out of the pocket of her slacks.
“I wonder if that drawing is about your name, or if it means something else. Have you seen this graffiti anywhere at Paradise Air? Do you have any ideas who could be involved?”
“Maybe.” Smiley reached for the door of the fridge.
Lei waved him back. “We need to get prints off there, too.”
“I already opened it before. He took some food.” Smiley withdrew his hand. “I think it was one of my employees. I’ve gotten some hate mail lately. I already told all this to the police officers that first came.”
“I’m sorry for the repetition, sir. The case was bumped to the Bureau due to the stolen aircraft aspect and your high profile as the company’s owner. We’ll need to take a look at any and all negative correspondence you have,” Ken said.
A woman burst into the room from a bedroom suite off to the left. Lei’s hand fell to her weapon at the intrusion.
“Max, Angel’s missing! I’m looking everywhere and I can’t find her!”
“Is this a kidnapping now?” Lei asked Smiley, whose ruddy face had gone pale.
“It might as well be,” he growled, embracing the distraught woman who’d flung herself into his arms. “Angel’s our dog. Chihuahua. She’s our baby.”
“Well, shit, it could be worse,” Lei said, even as her heart squeezed, remembering her Rottweiler, Keiki. Ken shot her a quelling glance, but it was too late.
“It couldn’t be worse, goddamn it,” Smiley bawled. “Some asshole broke into my house and stole my plane and my dog! Find the sonofabitch, and find him now!”
Lei felt the blush that had always been her undoing in the tingling of her scalp, a pink wave of color moving up her olive-skinned, freckled face. Somehow in her mixed heritage of Hawaiian, Japanese, and Portuguese, the outspoken, impulsive Portagee part was what always got her in trouble.
And though she’d said it could be worse, she knew the pain of losing a dog firsthand.
Even in the heat, Ken’s gray summer-weight FBI suit hung in perfect lines from his chiseled frame as he moved to stand beside her. His stern face projected authority and competence.
“Calm down, sir. We’re at the very beginning of the investigation. I’m sure we’ll be able to track down your plane and dog in short order. Why don’t you and your wife take a break while we do a walk-through, see what we can see? You two can make us a list of what you know is missing.”
Smiley pulled his wife over onto the couch, looped a hamlike arm over her. She was still in her nightgown, the old-fashioned kind with a tucked neckline, thin cotton printed in sprigs of roses. A jumble of silver-blond hair spilled over his hands as he patted her back and muttered gruff, soothing noises into her ear as she cried on his neck.
Emmeline Smiley appeared to have been hit hard by the burglary, or at least by the loss of the dog. Lei felt a little pang as she turned to Ken. “Where first?”
“Wherever there might be something worth stealing.” Ken addressed Smiley. “Do you have a home safe?”
Smiley pointed down the hallway his wife had entered from. Lei and Ken headed toward it, Lei, as the junior agent, trailing slightly behind. They kept their hands on their weapons and checked each opulent room.
Several bedrooms, each more luxurious than the last, opened off the short hall. A pair of double doo
rs bisected the end of the passageway, and Ken pulled one door open while Lei turned into the room, weapon in “low ready” position, finger alongside the trigger, aimed down and away from her partner.
Empty.
The room was traditionally furnished: green-shaded lawyer’s lamp over a burled-wood desk, thick red carpet, a gas fireplace, and a pair of leather recliners fronting a flatscreen TV. A pool table and a wet bar completed the male sanctuary.
The two agents moved into the room. Double French doors (locked, Lei checked, pushing down lightly with a tissue from the desk) faced out to the ever-present ocean view. A large oil painting, a front view of the beach house, hung on the wall behind the desk.
“Seems a likely spot.” Ken reholstered his sidearm, carefully lifted the painting off the wall with tissues. Lei inspected the shiny steel surface of the wall safe, her tilted brown eyes reflecting back as her straight brows pulled together in concentration. She touched the dial with a tissue. It didn’t budge.
“Still locked.”
They rejoined the couple in the living room, where Smiley produced a file folder on the ultralight. Ken handed Lei the photos of the aircraft after he inspected them. Lei frowned. It was a sleek, chrome-colored shape, every inch a miniature airplane, with a propeller, a twenty-five-foot wingspan, tiny wheels, and a Plexiglas bubble over the cockpit.
“This looks like a real plane,” she said. “I thought ultralights were more like bicycles with wings. Does it run on special fuel?”
“The Hummel is a kit. I built it myself. And no, it runs on ordinary gasoline.” Apparently, for twenty thousand dollars, the kit could be ordered online and shipped right to anyone’s home.
They left for the FBI main office in Honolulu in the Bureau’s black Acura SUV after issuing a Be on Lookout for a missing ultralight aircraft: one sleek silver Hummel Ultracruiser, Model H-3443. Also missing were half a ham, a loaf of bread, six hundred dollars in cash left out for the housekeeper to do the shopping, and one teacup Chihuahua named Angel.
Chapter 2
“This could get interesting,” said Lei, sorting the stack of hate mail Smiley had given them into chronological order as Ken drove back to the Bureau headquarters in Honolulu. Stowed behind her seat was a crime kit filled with various samples and fingerprint slides and photographs of the plane and the dog.
“One thing about the Bureau. Nothing’s ever boring.” Lei knew Ken had ten years at the Bureau, paired with her for his strong closure rate and adherence to protocol—Special Agent in Charge Waxman had apparently heard rumors about Lei’s rule-bending ways.
Lei liked that Ken had been recruited out of Columbia as an undergrad but had grown up in Hawaii and was able to “blend,” using pidgin when it helped a case. As a native to Hawaii, too, she had some of the same advantages but came from a much rougher background.
This whole FBI thing was Marcella’s fault, Lei thought as she sorted the stack of letters. Special Agent Marcella Scott, whom she’d met on one of her cases as a police officer, had become a friend and had been the one to recruit her to the Bureau. Not a day went by that Lei didn’t wonder if she’d made the right decision.
One hand crept into her pocket, and she withdrew the round metal talisman she always carried—a bit of hammered, melted white gold embedded with a roughness of diamonds. She rubbed it, thinking of faces she’d loved and lost.
Ken glanced over. “What’s that?”
“Ancient history.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Spill.” They’d been paired for only a few weeks, and there were a lot of gaps in the story she’d told him when they first met.
“Why?”
“Partners. Gotta know the good, the bad, and the ugly. So I know how to look out for you, and vice versa.”
“You first.”
“Okay. Only child. Attended Punahou. Favorite color is FBI blue.”
“Pfft. That’s all in the bio. Gimme a real secret. So I know you trust me like you’re asking me to trust you.”
A long moment passed. Finally, “I’m gay.” His warrior’s face looked out the window, turned away from her.
“Damn. My gaydar’s usually pretty good and it totally missed you.” She said it with a smile.
“I’m with the Bureau. Last frontier of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’”
“Okay, then. I still have a touch of PTSD from my past—abused as a kid. It acts up sometimes. This helps.” She held up the disc.
“What is it?” Ken reached for it, but she put it back in her pocket.
“Just a gift from a friend.” Lei wasn’t ready for quite that much disclosure. “So, what do you think about our burglar?”
“What do you think?” Ken was still testing her, checking her reasoning.
“Might be a kid, or an adult trying to seem like one. Probably not a crime of opportunity, because most burglars wouldn’t know how to fly that ultralight. With the graffiti, it looks like the Smileys were targeted. Someone’s got an ax to grind—and some impulse-control problems, evidenced by the grabbing of the dog.”
Ken inclined his head in agreement. “I bet we find something in the hate mail. This unsub’s got exposure to aircraft, probably either an employee or family member of an employee. What do you think the smiley face means?”
Lei thought about the scribbled symbol. “Let me look at the photos.” She reached back and picked up the Canon, scrolled through the photos of the scene and magnified the one of the graffiti. “The mouth isn’t actually smiling. It’s kind of got a hook at the end.”
“We’ll go over everything at the station and I can take a good look again. I remember that, though. It’s not exactly a smile. What about the haole tagline?”
“Either he’s a local or trying to seem like one. Could actually be Caucasian and trying to throw us off.”
They pulled up at the downtown Prince Kuhio Federal Building, entering the underground garage. Ken ran their keycard across the scanner, which allowed them to pass a guard box. A few minutes later, they rose in the elevator to the tenth floor, where the Bureau had its offices.
Lei had spent her first four months in the Bureau at Quantico, Virginia, doing intensive training and the last six months on New Agent Trainee probation. During that time, she’d run background checks and done interviews of applicants to the Bureau, interspersed with grunt work at various field offices around the country before this posting, the one Marcella had set her up for.
She was finally feeling a little more comfortable in the relatively posh building after years as a police officer in a variety of well-worn headquarters. The FBI office’s glossy setting, with marble floors, leather seating, a coffee table, and a receptionist in a bulletproof booth, still felt way too slick. She and Ken lifted a hand to the receptionist—actually a NAT, as she had recently been. They ran keycards across another scanner, and the interior doors, stainless steel behind faux wood paneling, whooshed open.
Lei’s black athletic shoes squeaked as they walked down the hall, the sound a marked contrast to the tippety-tap of Marcella’s heels as her friend hurried out of her office.
“Lei! I hear you guys pulled the Smiley burglary—I wanted that one!”
“She’s got to cut her teeth on something, and it looks like an easy one,” Ken said.
“I’m still not over running into you every day,” Marcella said to Lei, a smile lighting her face as she fisted hands on hips. The senior agent always looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of Vogue—the severe FBI “uniform” somehow enhancing a curvy figure, golden tan, and tiny waist. The only nonregulation thing Marcella always wore were glamour shoes—today’s were pointy-toed slingbacks.
Lei pushed her curly, frizzing hair back, a marked contrast to Marcella’s smooth, dark updo. Ken went on to their office with the crime kits and camera.
“It’s great being in the same building, at least—and this case is interesting. It’s nice to get away from all those applicant screenings they had me doing during probation.”
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p; “Ken’s a good partner for you. He’ll keep you honest, show you the ropes.” Marcella gave Lei’s arm a little tug, pulling her into the spare little cubicle she shared with her partner, Matt Rogers. “Got a minute?’
“Just a minute. Ken’s going to want to go over all the evidence we collected, get our casework started.”
“Okay. So—have you heard from Stevens?”
Lei blushed for the second time that day, a crimson wave. Even though Marcella knew all there was to know about her bumpy love life with Detective Michael Stevens on Maui, she couldn’t suppress the reaction to his name. Her hand slid into her pocket, rubbing the white-gold disc.
“No. I told you we broke up when I left. We haven’t stayed in touch. He told me he wasn’t waiting for me when I left for the Academy. It’s been a year now, and I’ve been waiting for the right time to…look him up.”
Stevens was her first love, and they’d been living together on Maui when she left him to join the FBI, a move that had seemed a fatal parting of the ways—but things had worked out as she’d hoped, and postprobation, she’d been posted in Honolulu. She’d been procrastinating, hoping for a good excuse to call him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t bother.” Something in Marcella’s voice made Lei snap her head up to look at her friend. Marcella’s strong-boned face was set, her full mouth a tight line and arched brows pulled together in a frown. “He’s married.”
“What?” Lei felt the blood drain out of her face. Her vision telescoped, black encroaching around a circle that centered on one of Marcella’s concerned brown eyes. It’s the PTSD—breathe, she told herself. Her fingers curled, pinching her thigh through the light fabric of her slacks, hard, and pain grounded her. She sucked in a breath. “What did you say?”
“He’s married.” Marcella reached into the small refrigerator beside her desk, splashed water from a filtration carafe into a wax-paper cup, handed it to Lei. Lei brought it to numb lips, sipped. “He married that Thai girl you guys rescued from the cruise ship. Anchara.”